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Community activists rallied in the rain Thursday to protest a constitutional amendment proposed by Utah's two U.S. senators that could roll back or even phase out Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as a way to reduce federal spending and balance the budget.
The Anti-Hunger Action Committee, Coalition of Religious Communities, Disabled Rights Action Committee, Homeless Opportunity and Rights Network and individuals who depend on Medicare or Medicaid organized the Salt Lake City demonstration to warn senior and disabled Utahns about the plan the groups say would prove "devastating" to the community.
"We all need to leave this rally and go out and educate our neighbors about what [U.S. Sen.] Mike Lee is trying to do," Bill Tibbitts, Anti-Hunger Action Committee director, said to about 30 protestors huddled under umbrellas near Salt Lake Regional Hospital.
Lee's proposal, introduced March 31 with Sen. Orrin Hatch as a co-sponsor, would balance the budget by capping spending at 18 percent of the previous year's gross domestic product. Such an approach could pit all domestic spending against the defense budget; its many conservative supporters say it would allow the economy to grow unfettered.
In a statement that coincided with the bill's introduction, Lee said only a constitutional amendment "will force Congress to make the tough decisions about our national priorities and prevent digging the country deeper in debt."
Rally organizers said one in three Americans rely on Medicaid and Medicare for basic health care. Without the programs, the advocates said, they would have no medical care at all.
"We are asking people who are on Medicaid or Medicare to get educated about what is at stake and tell at least two of their friends why Medicare or Medicaid matter to them, personally," Barbara Toomer, Disabled Rights Action Committee spokeswoman, said in a statement issued prior to the rally. "We are also asking them to contact Senator Lee because he has not been in office for very long, appears to have led a fairly sheltered life, and so he needs to hear about Medicare and Medicaid from real people."
A constitutional amendment is difficult to pass. Even so, Toomer said at the rally that the time to protest is now.
"I see this as the possible swing in politics," she said. "This needs to be stopped in the bud."
Lee's communications director, Brian Phillips, said the rally participants were making connections that aren't there.
"It's critical to make this point," Phillips said. "These organizations are making a jump from the balanced-budget amendment to eliminating entitlement programs. That is unquestionably false. There are no stipulations in the balanced-budget amendment that tell Congress how to spend how much on what programs."
Because the amendment would provide a framework for spending without specific recommendations, it's conceivable Medicare and Medicaid spending could increase, Phillips said, adding, however, that Lee wouldn't support such increases.
Rather, Phillips said, Lee supports block-grant funding for Medicaid and subsidies for people to pay their Medicare premiums.
Lee has demanded that Congress pass the amendment before he would support an increase in the nation's debt ceiling, a move necessary to avoid defaulting on loans from other countries. He also has promised to lead a Senate filibuster to get his way.
Lee has signed a deal to write a book about his amendment quest and has received an undisclosed advance for the project. Meanwhile, he filed a required financial report this week that shows his personal debt has put him in the red.
Thursday's protest wasn't aimed just at the proposed constitutional amendment — which now has been co-sponsored by all 47 Republicans in the U.S. Senate and a couple of Democrats — but also against any cuts to the safety-net programs the advocacy groups consider critical for public health and well-being.
Tibbitts said he believes the proposed amendment's chances are slim. But Utahns, he said, need to understand what their senators are proposing. "For three generations," Tibbitts said, "the courts and Americans have said it's OK to have Social Security and Medicare."
Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has been critical of the proposal, saying it would "virtually ensure" any downturn would become a deep depression.
In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Robert Greenstein, president of the left-leaning nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said mainstream economists don't like the proposal "because it would require the largest budget cuts or tax increases precisely when the economy is weakest." —
How to pass a constitutional amendment
The U.S. Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either as a joint resolution by Congress — which must pass it by a two-thirds majority in both chambers — or through a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures. None of the Constitution's amendments have come from a convention. An amendment becomes part of the Constitution only if three-quarters of the states — 38 out of 50 — ratify it.